Standard English

Editorial
Stabroek News
May 20, 2000


In the Sunday Stabroek of May 7, Andaiye in her Woman's-eye View column addressed [please note: link provided by LOSP web site] the question of literacy in its larger sense, or more properly, the lack of it among younger Guyanese. "So let's admit," she wrote, "without any attempt to be snide, that there is a cross-class, cross-race, national epidemic of wrong English that needs to end." Wrong English, of course, is not the same as Creolese which has its own rules and linguistic norms. However, the accepted wisdom is that wrong English (i.e. not observing grammatical/syntactical rules in a context where standard English is supposed to be the medium of communication) comes about because of the influence of Creolese norms.

It is not that Creolese is not a valid form of expression; after all, as Andaiye said, "it describes and explains our environment better than standard English does." However, the world requires that we deal with other environments as well, and that we do so in a form that is intelligible to that world. No one wants standard English to supplant Creolese; what they want is for the population to be as conversant with standard English as they are with Creolese.

And in the old days, they were, of course. Andaiye said that this was because " the teaching was informed and it was rigorous... [It] taught rules and made students practise applying them." According to the new thinking, we should be teaching English as a second language. Exactly what informs this conclusion is not clear, and as the Sunday columnist observed, this approach is really only appropriate in Amerindian areas, where the first language is unrelated to English, like Patamona.

Her solution to the problem (involving a decision at the political level) is "a broad, all-encompassing national campaign for literacy, in and out of schools, using the generations who were formally taught standard English as its first batch of teachers and building from there." At an earlier point in her column she suggests that those teachers of English who were never taught standard English themselves, should be taught how to learn it and teach it simultaneously.

Certainly some kind of blitz on the problem is essential. But it requires books as well as teachers, and a return to the culture that encouraged children to read books. Inadequate teaching can often be compensated for by exposure to books from a young age, where the rules of standard English can be imbibed painlessly. The book shortage, at least, is an easier problem to deal with than the question of teaching per se.

There are all kinds of possibilities where this is concerned: the printing of large quantities of cheap story books for children, with which the schools can be flooded; a TV advertising campaign involving leading Guyanese both here and abroad telling parents that reading makes kids smarter; a programme for retired teachers, radio personalities, etc., to go into nursery schools frequently and read stories to small children; and community programmes which would allow parents to take their young children to a community centre, or wherever, where identified readers would read to them on a regular basis. There are all kinds of permutations and options, provided that the political will is there. If the powers-that-be would only snap out of their lethargy, recognize that there is a problem and apply some imagination to solving it, they could at least help the new generation coming up to acquire the kind of versatility in standard English which would make it possible for this country to compete in the global economy.